Today is a milestone as I’m officially closer to 50 than 40. And I think it’s fair to say that short of Arsene Wenger squaring up to Bombardier Allardyce and kicking him square in the swingers during the pre-match handshake at Upton Park on Saturday and saying “Blow on those bubbles, fat man”, I couldn’t [...]

With the financial uncertainty looming all over Europe, given the results of the recent elections in France and Greece, it’s probably not terribly surprising that filthy lucre continues to dominate the headlines. Although it’s sort of ironic that most of Fleet Street’s finest are channeling their inner Chicken Littles to cluck omniously about debt loads [...]

It’s Day 5 of the anti-Woy jihad being conducted by Merseyside’s favourite red top and full marks for creativity. They doorstopped a few FC Hollywood favourites who knew nothing about the new manager, made some bland comments about their lack of knowledge and blew it into some Teutonic taunting about not choosing the wheeler dealer. [...]

The release of Forbes‘ annual list the most valuable football clubs could not have provided a more suitable backdrop to Saturday’s Battle of the Brands. Because the tilt between Roman’s Rent Boys and Holloway Road Properties PLC is nothing if about the money. There’s no silverware on the line in the London repechage as the league [...]

It’s Thursday and, frankly, it’s tough to concentrate. The Fort McMurray Fury u-12 boys leave tonight for the provincial championships in Grande Prairie and we’ve decided to break up the trip into two legs so the kids won’t travel on the bus all day and then be forced to play a game on Friday night. [...]

With the midweek calendar dominated by meaningless cash grabs from national FAs important preparation for national sides preparing for this summer’s Euros, it was unsurprising to see the angst, hope and knee-jerkism displayed by various hacks. The result of the night had to be in Genoa, where Clint Dempsey’s winner handed the Azzuri its first-ever [...]

It’s derby weekend and there’s really not been much change in the Fleet Street narrative as they’ve derided Arsene Wenger (three league titles and four FA Cups) as arrogant, out of touch and stubborn for his failure to keep ahold of Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri and then replace them because, Lord knows, they were [...]

Afternoon bonus feature with a nice compare/contrast between two European giants. James Horncastle explains how poor decisions off the pitch have finally caught up to Inter Milan while the Swiss Ramble deconstructs how FC Hollywood continues to tick along
Friday morning
It’s a Friday filled with hands-on-cheeks gasps from football’s truth troops.
To north London, where watching his side’s gutless [...]

So the manager with the best-ever winning percentage in the history of the Three Lions quits after twice steering them to qualification in major tournaments. He does after comments backing his low-rent captain (who led a revolt against him in England’s last major tournament)  were torqued right out of context by a pack of witless, [...]

Manchester United 1 Newcastle United 1
A lot of the postmortems will inevitably centre on John Flynn’s controversial penalty call on a perfectly legal tackle by Rio Ferdinand. However the inability for the hosts to finish off the visitors — who were shorn of their best midfielder —  should trouble Lord Beetface. There were a couple [...]